


I Think It's Time For Some Ohana

by JerseyGirl



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Depression, First Kiss, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Love, M/M, Ohana, Pre-Slash, Romance, Romantic Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-18
Updated: 2012-05-23
Packaged: 2017-11-05 14:16:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/407368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JerseyGirl/pseuds/JerseyGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After three years as Five-0's lead pair, after everything that's happened in those three years, it takes concerned <i>ohana</i> to show them that maybe there's a salve for all those wounds…in what's been there between them since the beginning. Now complete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story assumes we're already at what would be the end of Season 3/beginning of Season 4. Therefore, some of what's mentioned hasn't actually happened yet, though it's been hinted at by spoilers and by the Season 2 finale. Just go with the idea that this story spoils absolutely everything. :-)

Somehow, in the giant clusterfuck that was the daily existence of a Five-0 member, it had simply never come up. 'It' being the push-me/pull-you thing that existed between a certain high-profile pair of partners who headed up a certain state task force.

Three years they'd had each other's backs. Three years and several hundred thousand tons of massive, life-changing events had torn them apart, brought them closer, orchestrated a dance between them like the ebb and flow of the tide on the beaches one of them loved so much and the other one learned to tolerate and sometimes even enjoy.

All four of them were _ohana_ , and that family extended far beyond just them. Once you threw Malia, Max, Kamekona and a handful of other friends into the mix, you could get a pretty damn good party going. And every one of them would do anything for the others.

But to date, nothing more had ever surfaced. Truth be told, no one outside of Danny and Steve's heads had a clue if either of _them_ had a clue what those little touches and long looks and creepily silent full-blown conversations really meant.

Kono had an idea, and she even shared it with Chin once the mess with her going undercover for Fryer was resolved. "Do you see what I see, or am I seeing things?" she'd asked him one night when they were the only ones left in Five-0 headquarters.

Chin had shrugged and leveled his gaze at her. "Sometimes I wonder," he finally admitted. "But hey, it's their business, right?"

Of course it was, and Kono hadn't mentioned it since, but she'd been watching.

And then North Korea and Japan and Wo Fat and Shelburne and custody battles and Malia and Kono nearly killed and somehow, they'd made it and then some.

It'd convinced them of the fact that they needed to remain much more tight-knit. They needed to stay closer together. They couldn't let themselves be separated from each other, whether because of family problems, covert phone calls about kidnappings, the lure of answers to long-kept secrets or boyfriends on the phone.

It didn't mean they didn't have personal lives. After all, Chin was still married and Kono and Adam were somehow working it out. Gabby and Danny had drifted apart, and Catherine had tried for a stay in Hawaii but couldn't hack being stuck in one place, so she and Steve, sadly, were also over.

It was this latest development – which involved Cath's departure from Hawaii back to the _U.S.S. Enterprise_ three weeks earlier – that had Kono's concern back in full force where Boss and Other Boss were concerned. This time when she approached Chin, both Danny and Steve were also in the palace holed up in their respective offices.

Danny kept throwing concerned glances in the direction of McGarrett's office, and Steve looked like his best friend had just died. Which he hadn't, considering it was his best friend's blue eyes throwing the concerned glances his way.

"They're miserable," Kono observed, perching on the corner of Chin's desk.

"Yeah, well, Steve's just lost Cath, and from what I understand, it's for good this time."

"And Danny?" Kono asked, looking up to where Danny was, once again, looking at Steve. His brow was furrowed, his lips were in a tight, straight line and he looked like he might just explode like one of Steve's grenades.

Chin sighed and leaned back in his chair, resigning himself to the fact that his cousin wasn't going to let this one go. "He knows Steve better than anyone. But I doubt Steve's opened up about how this whole Catherine thing's making him feel. And for Danny, it's probably eating him up that Steve won't talk to him about it."

Kono grinned at him. "See? You think about them, too."

"How can I not, we work with them!" Chin replied defensively.

"I just wish…" Kono shook her head as her voice trailed off in the ether.

"That we could do something to help?" Chin finally asked.

She looked at him hopefully. "Would you kill me if I said yes?"

Chin smiled, then looked out to observe first Steve, who was not-so-gently attacking the latest report via beating on his keyboard, then Danny, who was on his feet, still in his own office, staring at what McGarrett was doing and biting his lip.

"I think it's time for some _ohana_ ," Chin observed.

"I'm in," Kono said, getting off the desk and crouching down next to his chair so she couldn't be seen through his office windows. "What's the plan?"

* * *

"This is a nice place, I've never been in here," Danny stated as he looked around from his perch on a high stool around a tall circular table. Waterfront views, island music contributing to the atmosphere. Beige walls and wood from tables to chairs to floor, with lights that hung down from the high ceiling, Gordon Biersch brewpub was truly someplace he hadn't ever made it to in his time in Honolulu.

"I haven't been here for a while," Steve admitted, and they all looked at him because it was the first time he'd spoken since they walked in other than to order up sliders, calamari and Ahi Tuna Poke for appetizers and a Märzen beer, which he insisted Danny try.

Much lighthearted banter had ensued from Danny's side, the light in his eyes giving Kono hope…but Steve had diffused it so fast by falling back into a funk that even Danny had stopped talking.

This was _not_ going the way the cousins had envisioned.

They made it through the appetizers, and were just starting to tuck into their Bistro Steak Medallions, Barbecued Salmon and the Crab-Stuffed Sole that made Danny _moan_ with pleasure at his first bite.

Kono and Chin _both_ noticed Steve's eyes snap to Danny's face, which was currently tilted up toward the ceiling, eyes closed, tongue darting out to lick his lips.

Steve? He stared.

_Stared._

Danny righted his face, opened his eyes, and was just about to attack his plate for a second forkful of what he was internally deeming as Heaven on Earth when he looked across the small table and _noticed_.

Danny blinked.

Steve didn't.

Kono looked at Chin, who glanced at her, then back at Steve.

No one moved a muscle.

Then, as if he hadn't been in the mother of all depressions for a good couple of months, Steve smiled. Not a shy, tiny smile. Not that crooked halfway one that you just knew was laced with traces of smirk. This was a big, wide, toothy smile that actually reached his eyes.

The smile that then graced Danny's face started out small, but the corners of his mouth kept turning up and up and up until at last his grin was just as big, just as wide and just as goofy as his partner's.

They resumed attacking their plates of delicious food and downing a total of six Märzens among them. Other than idle chitchat about the latest cold case they were looking into at the behest of Governor Denning, and a few nods and hellos to HPD or members of the public who recognized them, the remaining hour of eating and drinking passed with very few words.

Kono's and Chin's silent looks at each other told them they both knew that this was a monumental thing for their blond Other Boss, this whole 'no words' business in the face of good food. They also knew that somehow a switch had been flipped inside Steve, because not once did his face resume any semblance of sadness for the rest of the evening.

When at last around nine o'clock they agreed to call it a night – after all, Chin had Malia to get home to and Kono had Adam waiting by the phone for her to tell him she was available for a late-night date – Danny handed the keys to the Camaro off to Steve like nothing was any different than it'd been early on in their partnership.

But Kono, as she climbed onto the back of Chin's motorcycle and put her helmet on, noted the way that words were being exchanged between the two. The way Steve's taller body curved, seemingly of its own volition, toward Danny. The way the corners of Danny's eyes crinkled in a smile even as he was gesturing wildly at his partner while probably stating all the ways he would make Steve pay if he wrapped them around a tree on the way home.

And they made it sound like 'home' was a single place, rather than Danny's small apartment and Steve's beachfront property.

"Think we helped?" Kono asked as Chin's bike roared to life.

He turned to look at her out the corner of his eye through the visor of his helmet and shrugged. "I hope so. We're not much of an _ohana_ if we didn't."

"We know them too well," Kono said.

Chin revved his bike's engine as they watched the Camaro leave the parking lot. "Yeah, well, maybe not."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I thought maybe we could get them talking, not that it would take Danny sounding like he was having the best sex of his life to snap Steve out of his funk."

Kono laughed out loud and wrapped her arms around her cousin's torso as they pulled out of their parking spot.

Yeah, they knew their _ohana_ – and their bosses – pretty darn well, she thought triumphantly. And as much as she really was looking forward to a sexy night in with Adam Noshimuri, she also really wished she could be a fly on the wall at the McGarrett house tonight.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No, things aren't easy when one of you is battling depression because he's lost the woman he thought he was going to spend the rest of his life with. But as Danny notes, they've got a lot of keys between them...maybe one of them is the right one.

It turned out that Danny was, in actual fact, _not_ giving his partner shit about potential speeding violations and resulting accidents standing in front of his car waving his arms around like a broken windmill. Something Chin and Kono wouldn't ever actually find out, but hey, sometimes there is such a thing as privacy, even for _ohana_.

"My apartment is no longer crappy and I resent the implication," Danny was saying. "Or is it simply that no place in Hawaii is as good as your house and so you call everything that's _not_ your house 'crappy,' is that it?"

Steve was looking at him with that look, that same look he gave the first time Danny yelled at him about apologizing when you get someone shot. Seemed like it was a lifetime ago but it wasn't, it was only three-plus years ago and now here they were standing and staring at each other, both with a mixture of fond, exasperated, happy and who knew what else etched into their features.

He kept that look on his face, Steve did, throughout the car ride as he drove them back to his house with only a minimum of bitching from Danny about control freak SEALs with unnatural attachments to wood and glass abodes.

When they pulled into the driveway, when Steve shut the car off, neither man moved. Steve was staring up at the house and Danny had about two seconds of questions filling his head before he realized that maybe he should've fought harder for going to his nice two-bedroom pad and not let Steve win that particular argument.

Because sitting there looking at the place that had at times been the scene of a murder, at times had been the home of a happy four-person family, at times had been the scene of an epic shootout and had been broken into more times than Danny cared think about? Well, sitting there looking at all that history boxed up into one white house made a curtain descend over Steve's features again like the whole dinner smile hadn't happened.

 _Dammit_ , Danny swore in the privacy of his own mind. Because _Catherine_.

During her time here in Hawaii she'd been living with Steve. They'd shared the same bed. Shared the kitchen. Shared laundry. Shared their _lives_ , and Danny was the only person who knew Steve had started thinking of proposing to his woman not two weeks before she made the Earth-shattering announcement that she was leaving.

Leaving for good.

Danny stared at the profile of Steve's face, and for the first time ever he hated Lt. Catherine Rollins because it was she who'd put the sadness into those eyes. She who'd raised his hopes for having something like a normal future with a real flesh-and-blood family in it. She who'd then dashed Steve's pretty bubble into millions of tiny pieces. Yeah. Danny sort of hated her an awful lot in this moment.

"You got beer?" is how he tried to break the ice without breaking the rest of McGarrett.

Steve blinked and turned to look at him as though forgetting he'd even been sitting there to begin with. "Yeah. Cath bought some right…" His voice trailed off and he looked back toward the house.

"Well, I say we drink all of it. Tonight." Danny opened the car door and got out, willing his partner to follow him. He walked toward the house, trying for normal, silently thanking the cousins for injecting some _ohana_ help into the Steve-and-Danny equation and cursing Catherine for ever having interfered with it to begin with.

When he got to the front door he finally turned to find that Steve had actually opened the driver's side door but hadn't yet got out. "You know, you kind of have my keyring, and unlike you I can't break into a house with a fingernail and a strand of hair, so…" Danny held his hand up in the air and was rewarded by the ghost of a smile as Steve tossed his keys to him while getting out of the car.

It was shadowed, mostly, there in the driveway of the McGarrett home. Lit only by some low-level lighting from a tall lamp near the road, Danny could see enough to know that Steve was so tense he could snap in two at any moment, but also that the little smile he'd managed to put on his partner's face remained as Steve drew nearer.

So Danny turned, unlocked the door, stepped inside and keyed in the alarm code to shut it off. He tossed his keys into the small white candy dish on the table just inside the door and turned to watch Steve enter, close the door, and lock it.

Danny took the opportunity to look around what he could see of the house from here. He hadn't been over since three weeks before Cath's announcement because with the conveyance of the crumbling of his personal life, Steve had pretty well shut anyone and everyone out of being invited for good times.

As though he didn't have any more good times left for him, Danny surmised.

"You know, when a guy promises me a beer, I fully expect him to make a beeline for the fridge upon entering the establishment from which said beer is meant to be forthcoming."

Steve blinked at him as he pulled his own keys out of his pocket and tossed them into the candy dish. He looked down as the keys clanked together and his brow knitted. He glared at the two rings of keys like they'd personally offended his sense of SEAL bad-assery. Danny stepped a little closer.

"We've got an awful lot of keys between us," Danny said, then felt his mouth and throat go dry and decided to say one more thing. "Maybe one of 'em's the right one."

Steve said nothing, but he did look up from the candy dish to meet Danny's eyes, so Danny took it as a win. Still, the big, hazel eyes were filled with a sadness that made Danny himself want to weep, so he reverted to his usual state of being to try and inject as much 'normal' into this as he could.

"You are a terrible host. Making me have to get my own damn beer," he muttered, moving through the house and into the kitchen with the swagger he'd perfected as a thirteen-year old kid trying to imitate his firefighter dad.

Lightning-fast, Steve ninja'd his way past Danny to the fridge and had two bottles in-hand and the fridge door re-closed before Danny even got halfway through the kitchen. Steve twisted the caps off, tossed them in the garbage can under the sink and handed a bottle to Danny.

"Inside or outside?" Danny asked.

Jesus, Steve had _yet_ to say a word, as he nodded back toward the family room where Danny's one-time bed in the shape of a couch lived. Steve sat down on the far right end of it. Danny stood there for a moment.

Chin and Kono had tried to get the partners back on the road to happy, and Danny – more than anything – didn't want to make their effort, including the fact that they'd paid for the whole dinner, go to waste. But he just didn't know how to break through Steve's funk, his…his depression, Danny guessed is what it really was.

Guys like them, well, they didn't share deep-down emotions so much, especially not with each other, not unless it was with nothing more than looks and staccato words and phrases to try and smooth things over until the emotion had passed and they could just be themselves again.

Danny remembered crystal clear the looks that had passed between him and Steve in Max's tiny little car while Steve was still a prison escapee. He could read Steve like a book, and he knew Steve could read him the same way, but that required Steve actually looking at him.

Which he wasn't doing right now.

Well, if words wouldn't work, Danny thought, maybe looks would. Because he was losing Steve. They _all_ were. And he wasn't going to let that happen without a fight because he l—he lo—he cared for his partner way more than he had any right to.

So he placed his bottle of beer on an end table, came to stand right in front of Steve, and knelt down on the floor just in front of his boots. His hands came to rest palm-flat on his own thighs, and he ducked his head down to catch Steve's eyes.

Steve only just then seemed to realize Danny was there at all, let alone that he was _kneeling_ in front of him and looking right at him. His eyes snapped to Danny's like they had in the restaurant on the tail end of that inappropriately sexy groan over food. Danny moved his hand to Steve's left boot. "Get comfortable, yeah?" he said, beginning to undo Steve's bootlace with that hand, without looking.

"What are you doing?"

"He speaks!" Danny said through his responding grin, even as his other hand started working the laces of Steve's right boot.

Steve snorted, took a swig from his beer, and looked back down to watch as Danny removed first his left boot and then his right. Task completed, Danny met Steve's eyes again, shocked to find them full of unshed tears.

Danny felt his throat tighten up and swallowed hard against the anvil it seemed had taken up residence there. Steve's left hand rested limply on his thigh. Danny's eyes darted down to it. No, Steve was no woman and neither of them treated the other like they were.

But this was big. Danny felt like this, right here, was maybe his one chance at pulling his best friend and the man he l—lo—shit…the man he… _Steve_ …back from the brink of self-destruction. He reached out with his right hand and clasped it around Steve's left.

The surprise in Steve's eyes gave way to a lone tear trickling out of the right one. Danny reached up, leaned forward and brushed the tear away with the thumb of his left hand. "She's gone," Steve choked out.

"I know," Danny whispered. "But I'm not."

Another tear escaped Steve's eye. Then, as though finally giving himself permission to grieve, and maybe even to believe, Steve thunked the bottle of beer down on the end table, lunged forward and met Danny halfway in an awkward…but possibly the most beautiful and perfect Danny'd ever had…hug.

Danny found himself stretching up as tall as he could be on his knees. He inched his way forward into the open V Steve's legs had become as Steve buried his face in Danny's neck. Danny felt the telltale wetness of tears on his skin and soaking into his casual polo shirt but all he did was rub the palm of his right hand against Steve's back. Steve's hands fisted in Danny's shirt like he was afraid Danny would leave him, too.

Danny almost had twice already, so there was sort of a precedent, and Danny knew that part of helping Steve heal was making sure he was around for the long haul. If for no other reason than to prove to Steve that no, not everyone you care about will leave you.

Because Danny's pretty sure Steve l—lo—crap, he couldn't even think it.

Danny had always been a pretty self-aware guy. And there he was with an armful of BAMF SEAL crying on his shoulder. Clinging to him like maybe he was the last tether Steve had to existence itself which, in this case, may have been closer to the truth than Danny was aware of. So Danny knew full well what this meant. It was just a matter of taking it slow enough that Steve wouldn't bolt or shutter himself back behind blank, sad eyes as a result of way too much heartache in the past of a thirty-six year old guy.

"I got ya, Steve," Danny whispered, though he thought it came out sounding more like a strangled choke. "I got ya."

And so they held each other tight in their awkward hug as midnight approached, saying nothing else to each other.

Just holding on.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes nearly no words for them to finally understand.

Danny wasn't sure how much time passed there in the arms of his SEAL…yes, dammit, _his_ SEAL. He wasn't sure because some time between the eleventh and twelfth of Never, he stopped thinking altogether and just allowed himself to _feel_.

The same way he did when Grace was in his arms. He never had to force it with her; it'd always been so natural, so real and honest and sucker-punch-to-the-gut perfect from the moment he looked into her newborn eyes.

But Steve, well, Steve was hard fucking work, man, he just _was_ , and after three years at the Naval officer's side through more shit than he ever could've predicted would happen to a group of four people, all four of their team loved each other like only brothers and their sister in arms could. Only when they had faced death together, become aunt and uncles to a little girl, held each other's lives in their hands, could people become so close. They had faced everything from torture to imprisonment to defamation to getting through a case not-so-unscathed when your perp was a bomb-happy freak or a knife-wielding murderer or a gun-toting thief.

From Nick's betrayal to Gracie's kidnapping. From Matty's misdeeds to Mary's abduction. From Kono being dumped into the ocean to drown to Chin's wife being tied up and injured. From Fryer's death to Max taking a bullet. So much more than that. So. Much. Shit.

And now this. All this, with Joe White and Jenna, with Lori coming and going and Wo Fat. With the woman Steve thought had been his mother but had turned out to be a cosmetically-altered fake meant to lead Wo Fat away from the real Shelburne, whose identity was still a mystery to them all.

The one bright spark for Steve had been Catherine.

Now all he had left were the four people who'd had his back from the moment they'd become Five-0.

And Danny, shit, he'd…he'd…

He'd fallen in love.

Not with Rachel. (Again.)

Not with Gabby. (Though she was sweet.)

Not with any other woman.

Not with a woman at all.

When the realization hit him, when he actually could _think_ the words, _I'm in love with you_ , he pulled his head away from the dampness he'd created on his partner's neck by breathing against it for so long. Pulled away to find bloodshot, red-rimmed eyes that were now dry looking into his, surrounded by the crusting that comes when lots and lots of tears dry where they fall.

Vulnerable. Steve looked _vulnerable_.

This wasn't like the same look which Danny had seen the moment Steve found that tooth on the floor of Mary's place and thought it was hers. The look that he'd closed right down and shut out of sight.

This wasn't like the hope and joy that had crumbled when Chin had come up with the clue proving the woman he'd thought was his mother really wasn't. Something that to this day, Steve had barely said a dozen words to Danny about.

This wasn't like any of the other times because _this_ time, Vulnerable Face looked like it was stuck. Like maybe Steve was laid bare, raw, one big open, bleeding wound needing the salve that…that maybe only Danny could provide.

Danny's left hand rose to Steve's right cheek. He laid it there gently against the day-old stubble. His heart skipped any number of beats when Steve hitched in a breath, closed his eyes and leaned into Danny's touch.

Christ, this was _such_ a bad idea because Danny would be Steve's rebound from Catherine if he did anything more than what he was doing right now.

Yet still his thumb began to move, slowly sweeping over Steve's cheekbone.

Steve's lips parted just a fraction, then he went still, even stopped breathing, frozen like a statue who was afraid that if it moved, the moment in which it could actually _feel_ everything it had ever wanted to feel would be gone like a fleeting remembrance of a long-ago dream.

Danny's thumb continued to sweep.

He didn't want to be the rebound.

And then suddenly, as though every puzzle piece slotted into place, he realized he _wasn't_.

It had been them from the get-go, from that moment when they'd met over the barrels of each other's guns right here in this house's garage.

It'd been them through Jameson's murder, Steve fleeing prison and being rescued from North Korea.

It'd been them in spite of Lori Weston wishing she could've had a moment as special, quiet and treasured with the man Danny was having that moment with right now.

It'd always come back to them, through everything.

"Steven," he managed to whisper, though he wasn't at all sure the name had actually passed through his lips. "Steven," he said again, like a prayer, like the invocation of everything that had been there all along, begging its forgiveness for him having been too hung up on his own problems, his own life, his own questionable sexuality to see it. "God," is what he whispered the third time, and for that one, Steve reopened his eyes.

There, in the darkness and silence broken only by the gentle sound of waves lapping at the shore, no more words were spoken because they didn't need to be. Silent communication was their forte. Volumes of emotions volleyed back and forth, too deep and too raw to be named. They stared, their hearts beating in time. Steve's hand moved up to mirror what Danny's was doing, carefully palming Danny's cheek like he might just break if Steve touched him too fast. Too hard.

And then, like the answer he'd been waiting for, Danny heard the rough, strung-out, crying-abused voice of his partner…his best friend…the man that he _loved_ …whisper, "Daniel."

So Danny closed his eyes and moved those measured millimeters closer.

Steve's lips were dry.

His stubble burned.

The kiss was barely there.

But it was.

And when Danny pulled away, he saw reflected in large, hazel eyes that Steve was just as aware now as he was.

So Danny smiled, and Steve smiled back.

Softly.

Happily.

When Steve leaned back on the couch, when he grasped Danny's biceps, Danny went willingly. No comments about control freak SEALs. No bitching about being manhandled. No gripes about how long it took them to find this place.

Just a six-foot tall man stretched out lengthwise, facing a five-foot-five man stretched out next to him. Eye to eye, Steve leaned in and Danny – as he'd been doing from the very start – met him halfway.

This time the dry lips and the burning stubble didn't matter.

All that mattered was their kiss.

All because Steve had an _ohana_ that loved him like no other in his life ever had.

And a detective from New Jersey who did, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for your comments and kudos. I hope this quiet little moment has done these partners the justice they deserve.


End file.
